


Out Here In Space

by Chill_with_Penguins



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: (just kidding I love them but for the sake of this fic they are Not Always Great), Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cory and Topanga's A+ Parenting, Depressed Riley Matthews, Episode 3x16, Everyone Needs A Hug, Featuring: lots of fighting with parents, Found Family, Friendship, Gen, Girl Meets Her Monster AE, Light Swearing, Minor Farkle Minkus/Isadora Smackle, Panic Attacks, Riley Matthews Needs A Hug, Runaway AU, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise, and the power thereof, but she gets better, it's just going to hurt a little until then, just because a family is non-traditional doesn't mean it's not a family, listen I promise this ends happily guys, who needs family when you have an insanely tight friendgroup?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:54:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29438583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chill_with_Penguins/pseuds/Chill_with_Penguins
Summary: Riley has $17 in her pocket, a bunny-shaped nightlight, and the clothes on her back. She has the memory of her mother's shouting, her father's warnings.She has, she's beginning to suspect, a whole lot more friends than either of them really stopped to consider.(or: a fic based on what would have happened if Riley had stayed away during Girl Meets Her Monster.)
Relationships: Farkle Minkus/Isadora Smackle, Isaiah "Zay" Babineaux & Lucas Friar & Maya Hart & Riley Matthews & Farkle Minkus, Katy Hart/Shawn Hunter, Lucas Friar & Maya Hart & Riley Matthews & Farkle Minkus, Lucas Friar & Riley Matthews, Maya Hart & Riley Matthews, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Riley Matthews & Everyone, Riley Matthews & Farkle Minkus, Riley Matthews & Isadora Smackle
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21
Collections: Finished111





	Out Here In Space

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there, guys, girls, ghouls, and everything in between! It's me, back again with some Disney Chanel hurt/comfort wherein I take a children's storyline and then proceed to Make Everything Worse^tm. Title from this one of course comes from the Red Planet Diaries theme song, because it was too perfect and I'm a sucker for song lyrics that are a little on the nose.
> 
> A preface to this fic: there's a lot that I love about Cory and Topanga in the show, exaggerated-for-comedy characteristics notwithstanding. But they also have their issues, and during Girl Meets Her Monster, I couldn't stop thinking about how it could have played out if Topanga and Riley had both been a little more stubborn... and then it was several months later and this was finally finished, after stopping and starting over and over again. For the sake of this fic, assume that there's been a little more of those background disagreements between Riley and Topanga scattered throughout the season. 
> 
> One last note here: Riley has a lot of friends and she's going to turn out just fine. But to get to that point, she's going to have to be sad and stressed out and wonder if she's making a mistake for a while. I don't think there's anything too graphic in this, but there are allusions to panic attacks and anxiety and a little bit of depression, so please please take care of yourselves. Get yourself a hot drink and a blanket and a cat, if at all possible, and make sure YOU are doing okay. 
> 
> And I think that's it! As always, thank you and I love you all. Feel free to come shout with me in the comments about the various troubling things in this show <3

The first thing she notices when she steps outside is the cold. It's night in New York in November, so it shouldn't surprise her that it's cold, but the damp, chilling wind cuts through the absolutely zero jackets she's wearing and the hazy shock surrounding her and all of a sudden it all feels too real.

 _What were we even fighting about_ ? Riley thinks, followed rapidly by _oh my god_ and _I need to go back inside and apologize_ . Her brain is a scattering of tattered thoughts; apologies and daydreams of reconciliation and random memories of Topanga cooking in the mornings, running her hand through Riley's hair, taking Riley and Maya to window shop for dresses for that dance coming up. _I want my mom_ , she thinks, and it's so visceral that she feels her heart beat in time with the words. All she can hear is her own pulse, the scrap of dead leaves pulled across the ground by the wind, the distant sound of sirens in some far-off part of the city. _I want to go home_ , she thinks, standing on the doorstep of her--no, not hers. _Her mother's_ apartment. That much, at least, has been made perfectly clear tonight.

Riley is still reeling from everything that's happened in the last two days. She feels like she's lagging, like her little wheel is spinning-spinning-spinning while it tries to catch up and buffer what's coming next, but she hasn't quite gotten there. Everything feels far off and distant: Dad shaking on his desk at school, Augie interrupting the fight, the look on Mom's face when she stood up. The marathon with Maya this weekend feels like a million years ago.

It's a dumb fight. Every part of her brain is overwhelmed with that thought, like she's trying to convince herself of something every person she knows has already told her: _this is a dumb thing to fight over_ . Who cares about some stupid show? (She does. She does so much.) This is her _mother_ . Riley can't be fighting with her _mother_ . Mom is the one who tells her what to do when she's fighting with her friends, so obviously, she _can't be fighting with Mom_.

The whole world feels strange and numb and distant. She has the clothes on her back, Horatio, and $17 in her pocket, and she's standing outside her apartment with no idea where to go from here. This is a stupid fight, she should go back inside and apologize.

Except.

Except that there's something inside her planting its feet and standing firm. Something that says _no, this is not ridiculous, it is not stupid of me to call myself a person_.

Riley is easily swayed. She knows this. She usually likes this about herself, even if everyone else thinks it's a weakness--she _likes_ that she's quick to trust, to love, to apologize. She's perfectly fine being gullible, being the incessant optimist, being the bright spot (the target) so that her friends have someone to look to when they're sad, when they need distraction, when they're hurting. Everyone around her knows… some of it, at least. They know that she's naive, even if they don't see that she _chooses_ to be, and that's why they've all been pushing her to apologize, to try diplomacy, to do whatever her mom wants.

But here's the thing: Riley makes the _choice_ to be that person, and that person listens to her heart. Right now, even though all of her brain is screaming at her to _get back inside_ , her heart is telling her that she's not wrong. It's not telling her that she's right, because she knows that this argument has too many shades and layers for her to be completely _right_ , but she also knows she isn't all wrong. If she goes back inside now, that's what everyone is going to think. They’re going to think that she's come to her senses and realized that she was completely in the wrong, here, and she's _not_.

(Once, almost a year ago, she'd looked Maya in the eyes and said _I might have to not be a chump for a little while._ )

(An important observation about that moment: her parents weren't there to see it.)

Riley has Horatio the Bunny Nightlight, the clothes on her back, and $17 in her pocket. She has a head full of doubts and the sliver of _knowing_ from her heart. She has no idea what she's doing, but she knows that if she walks away, there's a line that will be crossed.

(There's a line that's already been crossed.)

She takes a deep breath, feels the cold sting of the wind against her lungs, and starts walking.

* * *

It isn't until she's almost at Maya's apartment that she suddenly remembers the strangeness between them the past few days. The way Maya had walked away from her in the hallway, had sat at a different desk. _I would do anything for you, but I would not fight Topanga Matthews for you,_ she'd said, crouching next to Riley while they hid in the bathroom during lunch.

But Riley is cold and exhausted and she can't remember the way to Farkle's or Lucas's homes. She didn't even really remember the way to come here, but her feet took her anyway, and she's faced down enough of her fears tonight that what's one more, right?

It doesn't matter, in the end. Maya opens the door and her surprise gives way to soft, warm welcome in less than a second.

"I'm home, honey," Riley says, and tries for a smile.

* * *

Late that night, when they've curled up together on Maya's bed and Riley's watching the ambient light play across the ceiling as cars drive by and neon lights shift from one color to another, Maya finally asks.

"What… what happened, Riles?" she says, and she sounds so _tentative_. Maya should never sound that scared--she should be loud and bold and fearless, leaving trails of paint and bright laughter in her wake.

Then again, Maya's always been extra scared of breaking the things that matter most to her. And Riley's never been quite this breakable, in all the years they've known each other.

Riley still feels strange and distant, even after she showered and borrowed Maya's pajamas and drank the hot cocoa Maya made for her. She feels like her whole life might be one big movie, like she's a member watching from the audience with casual disinterest, but she knows that's not true because the hurt is there. She can reach out and poke it, feel the stabs where that will hurt once her brain can catch up.

Maya is still waiting for an answer, she realizes abruptly. It's rude for her to be sitting here in silence.

She opens her mouth and, stilted and jagged, the story comes out. The diplomatic negotiations, which had failed at both being diplomatic and at being negotiations. The words they shouted at each other. Packing and walking, robotic steps out the door and down the street and further away.

"Oh, Peaches," Maya says when she's done. She doesn't say anything else. What else do you say to that?

They let the quiet fall over them for a little while, just laying there and comfortably not-thinking. It's late at night and they have school the next morning (oh god, _school_ , how is she gonna face Dad--) and Riley is both wide awake and the most exhausted that she's ever been. On the desk across the room, Horatio glows softly, a familiar light in the darkness. It should be comforting, but he just looks out of place here, like a reminder that this is not home, no matter how many hugs her best friend gives her.

It's Maya who breaks the silence again. "What are you going to do?"

Riley shifts to be on her back, tucking her arms out of the way so she can stare at the shadows playing across the ceiling and pretend she's anyone but herself.

"I don't know," she says, and tries not to feel as alone as she is.

* * *

In the morning, things look better.

This is no surprise. Things _always_ look better in the morning. And plus, Maya's window faces east, which means Riley gets the chance to watch the dawn light filter in and turn the whole world those beautiful, strange colors that Maya could probably capture perfectly if she had half a mind to.

Watching the sunrise always makes her feel better, even when her world is falling apart. Especially when her world is falling apart.

Things will be okay. They always are. _Welcome to Rileytown_ , she thinks with a smile, and reminds herself that all wounds become scars, heal, fade away. This one will too. She just needs to get through today, and tomorrow, and all the days after that, and somewhere along the way she'll realize that this fight has healed.

She remembers suddenly that her astronaut-riding-a-unicorn is still perched on a shelf in her closet, bookending a precarious pile of shoes. There's a little sting of pain--looking at it always makes her feel better, and what's she going to do without all that _stuff_ she left behind?--but she takes a deep breath and lets it out and tries not to let that bother her.

The sun is coming up on the horizon, even if she can't see it quite yet through the press of buildings, and she's got $17 and a nightlight and one (1) outfit and the best friends in the world.

It'll be alright.

* * *

School is, unsurprisingly, a bit of a nightmare. She can almost convince herself while they walk that this is a normal day, that she's just had a sleepover with Maya, no big deal. They have sleepovers all the time, this is nothing new. Nothing strange is happening. Just a sleepover, Riley, calm down. (They never sleep over at Maya's house. This is the first time in years and years of friendship that they've walked to school from Maya's apartment, rather than Riley's.)

That comfortable delusion lasts approximately as long as it takes for her to step foot in her father's classroom and sees his disheveled clothes and the bags under his eyes, and then the crushing weight of it all comes swooping back down. His back is turned, so he hasn't seen her yet; he's staring blankly at the chalkboard with a piece of chalk in his hand like he isn't quite sure what he's supposed to write, which has never happened before. He looks lost in a way that feels _wrong_ . Dad is goofy and comforting, confident and calm. He isn't _lost_. That's not possible.

She's been standing in the doorway for a second too long, so she swallows down her nerves. _I'm not wrong_ , she thinks again, just a little bit firmer than the night before, even though everything feels like it's slipping out from underneath her.

"Hi, Dad," she says, and he jumps a little and turns, and oh, hello _wall of guilt_.

"Riley!" He doesn't shout, but he doesn't not-shout, either, and she can't tell if it's relief of anger coloring his voice. Maybe both. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

Ah. So the anger is winning, then. (She's never heard Dad swear, not once, and hearing it now comes like a slap to the face.)

(Based on the dead silence that's fallen over the classroom, everyone sitting perfectly still with wide eyes, she's guessing the others feel that _wrongness_ too.)

She takes a breath and keeps her chin in the air, rather than hiding in the hallway for the next ten years, which is what she'd like to do. "Nothing is wrong with me, Dad. I'm here to learn. That's what school's for."

"Where did you go? Why didn't you call us? Do you have any idea how worried your mother and I were?" he demands, his voice kicking up a notch for each question.

 _I'm so grounded_ , Riley thinks, followed immediately by _can you still be grounded if you don't go home?_

The oppressive silence in the classroom is aggressively Not Helping. She can feel the weight of dozens of pairs of eyes on her and Dad, attention shooting back and forth like a tennis match.

 _I'm fine, I'm just staying at Maya's for a little bit_ , she means to say. Instead, what comes out is "Godzilla took my phone, remember?"

She bites down on a flinch even as the words exit her mouth. Bad move, bad move, _abort abort abort_ \--

Dad goes still and quiet in the way he does so rarely, only for Very Serious Things, like when Augie's hamster died or Shawn had sent him that emergency text and he'd had to leave for a weekend suddenly. He turns around and picks up the piece of chalk to start writing on the board, his movements sharp and quick, jerking lines rather than his usual curved letters.

"You want to learn?" he snaps. "Sit down. Today, we're learning about the French Revolution."

* * *

At lunch, Zay plops his tray down with only about 30% of his usual flair, looking a little sick even though he hasn't even tried the green beans yet today. "That was… more fake heads than I've ever seen him remove in one class period before. And so much more _violent_ than usual."

There's resounding quiet from the table in response. Riley pushes a fry to one side of the little fry compartment, then the other. Her stomach is still twisting too much to even think about eating, and even though she knows she's being ridiculous and paranoid, it feels like everyone in the cafeteria is watching her.

There's a series of looks being exchanged over her head, but her gaze is on the fries she's not going to eat, so she doesn't see the silent vote taking place. She just knows that Lucas is the one who finally asks.

"So," he starts, pausing for just long enough for the awkwardness to crystallize in the air around them, "did… anything interesting happen yesterday?"

Across the table, Farkle huffs and rolls his eyes, shooting Lucas a look that clearly articulates _that was the worst possible way to approach this and I will never nominate you for friend duties again_. It's a very specific look, but Farkle pulls it off.

"Guys, just leave it--" Maya starts, already shifting closer to Riley protectively, but Riley drags herself out of the slouched position and looks up for the first time in ten minutes. Everyone is watching her with wide, worried eyes, and it makes her feel a little claustrophobic and a lot loved.

"I kind of got in a fight with my mom last night," she says.

"Yeah, we figured," Smackle responds, because she's the only one brave enough to push. "What _else_ happened?"

"Well I fought with my mom. And then, when I was done fighting with my mom, I left. And I spent the night with Maya."

"…Are you okay?" Lucas asks. Riley wonders, vaguely, if the Texas Lucas had ever been in a situation like this. Maybe. Maybe not. There's still so much she doesn't know about who he was before New York.

Riley sits up straighter and forces a smile, hopes the burn in her eyes can't be seen. "I'm fine. I'm just… I'm going to stay at Maya's for a few nights, I think. Is that… is that okay?"

She glances toward Maya, her heart hovering somewhere in her throat. Crap. She had just assumed it would be fine, like an _idiot_ , like someone who didn't know exactly how little the Hart household needed one more mouth to feed--

"Of course it's okay," Maya says, bumping their shoulders together with an easy smile, "How can we be roommates if you're not living with me?"

Riley has a bad feeling that the tears she felt coming on might be on her cheeks now, but she smiles at Maya anyway. So what if she's crying in the middle of the cafeteria? She's got her best friends, and it's not like anyone's watching.

(Everyone's watching. The Riley-and-Mr. Matthews-Mystery-Fight is the most exciting drama they've seen in at least a month.)

(That's okay, though, because Lucas and Maya and Farkle and Zay and Smackle all have her back; they quietly usher her outside and finish lunch as a picnic, making loud, distracting conversation about which language they should take together next year to fulfill the graduation requirement.)

(It's the best lunch Riley's had in weeks.)

* * *

It takes Katy three days to realize Riley's living with them, which makes Riley's blood boil a little; every time she's reminded of how much Maya deserves and how little she has, Riley gets that impulse to go punch the world in the face.

Then Riley stammers out the words _fighting with my parents_ and Katy's face goes all soft and she says _of course, sugar_ , even though she's been working for the past fourteen hours and she only bought enough groceries for two people, and Riley remembers all the reasons she loves Maya's mom.

Katy comes into Maya's room that night to wish them both a good night's sleep, and finds them hanging halfway off the bed, a mound of open textbooks around them and no actual studying in sight.

"You know," she says, hesitating only for a second before plowing ahead, "you're welcome to stay here for a few days, but you should go back home soon. Your parents are amazing people. I'm sure they miss you, and I don't want your relationship with them to fall apart."

Riley tries to smile at her, even though her internal organs feel like they all turned to stone at once and decided to start obeying gravity. "I'll think about it," she says, and isn't sure whether or not she's lying.

When Katy is gone, Maya loops an arm over Riley's shoulders and tugs her even closer. Maya can always tell when Riley is about to freak herself out. She can tell before Riley can, usually, and she always knows how to fix it.

Tonight, she gives her a tight hug and access to her hair for Riley to braid so she has something to do with her hands.

"You're welcome here forever, you know," Maya says, halfway into the third Dutch braid of the night. Riley keeps making them and unraveling them, steadfastly choosing to ignore the memories of her mom teaching her, guiding her hands on sunny Saturday afternoons.

"What if your mom decides I can't stay here anymore?" Riley asks, doing her best to keep breathing through the panic.

"Then we'll go stay with Smackle, duh," Maya responds instantly. "And then after that is Farkle, because his house is so big no one would even notice us."

Riley takes another deep breath and feels more of her anxiety drain away. "What if they do notice us? Is Lucas or Zay next?"

Maya wrinkles her nose and thinks for a minute before nodding decisively, jerking her hair out of place in the process. "Zay. He's a mess, but if we went to Lucas's we'd have to listen to his mother lecture us about a citizen's moral duty and believe me, you do _not_ want to go down that road."

Riley chokes on a laugh, more sputter than giggle. And then they're both laughing, holding tight for just a moment in the warmth of the room, in each others' comfort.

* * *

Lessons with Dad continue to be awkward and strained and more than a little passive-aggressive. They start taking their lunches outside most of the time, then every day, picnicking despite the harsh New York cold in order to avoid the stares. Riley watches Maya and Katy, the way they live so different from everything she's ever known, and offers to be part of the dinner-duty rotation. She may not be fighting with Mom, but that's no reason to let a perfectly good chicken casserole recipe go to waste. On Friday nights, she and Maya sometimes go to Smackle's house to watch kids' movies and rank the hotness of the princes. Riley steals Maya's phone when she needs to update her insta and doesn't let herself think that every sunset she sees from Maya's apartment takes her a little further from home. She watches Red Planet Diaries and sings along as loud as she can, because what's even the point of all this if she's not going to cling to the things she loves?

She breathes. She keeps going.

* * *

Christmas is peering around the corner when she finally works up the nerve to ask Katy about the diner.

She's been watching the woman come and go from work for weeks, biting her lips and wondering but never quite asking. She still has $10 of the $17, but she wants to get Maya a Christmas present and she can't ask her parents for money. She'd offer to do more chores around their apartment in exchange for an allowance, but she knows that Katy can't afford that right now; she's got Christmas coming up soon, too, after all.

So. Riley's is standing in the kitchen, pretending to look for something in the cupboard and desperately trying to figure out much or little to let show when she asks. But she's been pretending for long enough that Katy's probably starting to wonder what's going on, so she just needs to _do it already, come on Riley, like ripping off a bandaid_.

"Soisyourdinerhiringrightnow?"

"Uh, sorry, what was that sweetie?" Katy asks, which. Fair. That didn't exactly come out the way Riley planned.

She takes a deep breath and tries again, doing her best to reassure herself that people can't _actually_ implode with excess energy. "So, if your diner hiring right now?"

A blank, uncomprehending look appears on Katy's face. That's not a good sign. "Uh, yeah. We always need extra people during the holidays; we get a lot of tourists who don't know New York. Why?"

"I--" Riley swallowed, trying to ignore the flush she could already feel spreading across her cheeks. "I was kinda thinking that maybe… I could apply? I mean. Maybe that's stupid, I just--Christmas."

This is not going well, Riley realizes, a growing sense of dismay filling her chest. _Speak English_.

"Oh, kiddo," Katy says, and yep, there's the scrunched-up Adult Face that Riley has not been missing even a little bit these past few weeks. "You don't want to work there. You're not even sixteen yet. Just… take your time, alright? Be a kid while you can."

Riley stands up straighter, her embarrassment fading away beneath her growing irritation. "I'm sixteen in a week. And I just want to buy my friends Christmas presents, what's so wrong with that? I bet I'd be a great waitress. I'm good at talking to people! And making them happy!"

Katy sighs, and she looks so tired and for a second Riley forgets everything else under the guilt. (What is wrong with her? Why is she always messing things up for the people around her?)

"I know, kiddo," Katy says. "If you're sure, I'll grab an application for you during my shift tomorrow. Although, fair warning, they'll probably start you busing tables rather than waitressing, and you'll get paid basically nothing."

"That's okay," Riley says, the fight seeping out of her ask quickly as it had come. "Basically nothing is still more than I'm getting paid now, right?"

Katy laughs--success!--and ruffles Riley's hair on her way to grab a soda from the fridge.

* * *

Her sixteenth birthday comes and Dad is standing at the front of the class not saying anything and she's supposed to be eating the traditional waffles-with-sprinkles-and-whipped-cream birthday breakfast right now and she and Mom are supposed to go see that new movie to celebrate but they haven't talked in a month and Riley winds up leaving class to use the bathroom and sitting in the stall crying for thirty minutes.

Maya pulls her out. (Maya is always the one who pulls her out when she gets like this, too small and too big for her own skin all at once.) She and the others take Riley to this little hidden alcove on the third floor of the school that she's never noticed before, where you can see all the levels of the main hall and there are some squished, faded comfy chairs packed in tight. They sing _Happy Birthday_ quietly, so none of the teachers will notice they're not in the cafeteria, and Lucas's mom made them all cupcakes that contain no sugar but somehow still taste light and sweet and airy. Zay brought one bright, slightly-dented polka-dot candle, which he plops in her cupcake after several moments of careful consideration about _exactly_ where in the little puffs of frosting a candle belongs. Farkle pulls out the miniaturized flamethrower he made last night, and Smackle pulls out the latest article on black holes to distract him while she slides it back into his bag with a fond smile and an eye roll.

"You gonna blow it out?" Maya asks, one arm slung over Riley's shoulders.

"It's not lit."

"Well, duh. We figured getting expelled would make a pretty sucky sweet sixteen. But you still need your birthday wish!"

Riley blows out an unlit candle and wishes to go home, to stop fighting with her parents, to have never started fighting to begin with.

She goes to her next class with fingers still sticky from the cupcake, surrounded by the comforting white noise of her friends arguing over when that assignment was due, and feels lighter than she had that morning.

(She goes back to Maya's and spends the night staring up at the ceiling, imagining going back home, imagining that she'd open the door and get hugs from Mom and Dad and Augie, that they would talk it all out and settle everything and it would all be better.) 

( _Except_ , this little voice at the back of her head says, _would it? Would it be better, or just back to how it was before, when Mom thought of you as a daughter but not your own human being?_ )

She doesn't go home.

* * *

It's strange, working at the diner.

Riley only shows up for an afternoon or two a week, working from when she gets out of school until eight or nine, usually. She doesn't work very many hours, so her paychecks aren't very big. The tips she gets vary wildly depending on who comes in--sometimes people love her happy, perky way of talking, and others just want to be left alone and get out as soon as possible, and she has trouble telling which is which, at first. The people who like the way she serves them leave generous tips. She's lucky if the ones who want to be left alone leave anything at all.

She's worked in a restaurant before--she'd been spending afternoons and weekends at Topanga's for almost two years--but this is her first time working for real. Getting a paycheck, having a boss, having a set schedule rather than a mom who periodically tells you to come help. It's odd; more formal, definitely, but also fairer, in a strange way. If her boss is upset with her, he can't take away her phone. Sometimes it's a good shift and sometimes it's a bad shift, but she's at least on a mostly-equal playing field with the other teenagers who work there part-time. It's… nice. Not all the time, obviously, but overall--she likes working. She likes seeing people, trying to brighten their day a little bit; she likes watching her emergency money grow, being able to buy baked goods for her and Maya on the way to school again.

Katy is still hesitant about Riley working at all, and every time that Riley offers to pay them back, contribute to grocery money, anything at all to help, she tells her not to worry about it, to buy herself clothes or save for college. But as Riley cashes her latest paycheck, she studies the number in her bank account and bites her lip. A few hundred dollars, now; Christmas is just around the corner. She has enough to get the presents she wants to and then some.

She'll take another crack at making Katy let her pay rent tonight.

* * *

She's been living with Maya, and Maya has undoubtedly done the most to help, but the others have been helping in their own ways, too. Farkle and Smackle tutor her, making sure she stays on top of all her assignments even through all the distractions. Lucas and Zay keep her sane, supplying a constant stream of snacks and hugs and funny anecdotes. Maya… keeps being Maya, which Riley is pretty sure is the only reason she's even a fraction of the person she is today; there aren't enough words in the world to describe how many ways Maya helps.

It really shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that when Christmas morning dawns and Maya immediately drags her out into the bitter cold and to Central Park, everyone is standing there waiting for her.

"What's going on?" she asks, looking around at all of their excited grins.

"Well, since--" Smackle starts, but she is immediately shushed by every member of the group. She startles a little and sends them all scowls.

"We thought that this year we could all spend Christmas together!" Farkle announces, accenting the announcement with little jazz hands.

"Right," Smackle continues, oblivious (or possibly intentionally ignorant?) to the Looks the others give her, "because your life has pretty much fallen apart and there's nothing sadder than spending Christmas without your family."

"Smackle!" Zay hisses, and flicks a piece of his trail mix at her. "We weren't supposed to say that part!"

Riley would probably have been offended if she hadn't been thinking the same thing for the past two weeks. As it is, she's just relieved that she's not going to be third-wheeling the Hart Christmas.

"Anyway," Lucas interrupts, stepping forward to offer her the extra hot chocolate he's holding, "we got permission from our families to spend today together. The point is we get to hang out for today, and Farkle was just telling us about this really cool--"

"Hold up, we were supposed to get permission from our families?" Zay exclaims. "I thought the whole point of this was that we didn't mind getting grounded for the next three months for her!"

There's dead silence for a minute, everyone staring at him. Smackle's the one to state the obvious, as usual. "That would be a _terrible_ plan, why would we do that?"

Zay throws his hands up in the air in defeat. "Well, you didn't tell me I was supposed to ask!"

"You shouldn't have needed to be told that! What could possibly be gained by sneaking out of your own family's Christmas celebration?"

Riley lets their arguing fall to the background, choosing instead to lean against Maya and focus on the warmth radiating out from the cup in her hands.

"What about your mom?" she whispers, a twinge of doubt in her chest. "Won't she be lonely?"

"Nah," Maya replies easily, looping an arm over Riley's shoulders, "she's spending the day with Shawn."

It's not perfect. It's not the Christmas that she looks forward to every year, and it doesn't chase all the doubts and regrets and homesickness out of her head. She still wonders about her family as they wander the streets, looking for someplace to warm up. She thinks about Auggie hanging ornaments while she scoops up a snowball for retaliation in Central Park. She wonders if her mom is cooking in the kitchen while she sings along off-key along to radio jingles. She eats McDonald's french fries that she bought herself, with her own money from her own paycheck, and wonders how her dad is holding up without Shawn this year.

It's not perfect, and it doesn't stop her from missing home, but it is an amazing day. She looks at her friends, all soaked from a snowball fight and laughing loudly as they huddle together, and thinks that she has some pretty amazing friends. That maybe she didn't spend Christmas without her family after all.

* * *

Topanga turns up at the apartment on the first day of the new year. It's Katy's hesitation that gives her away--if it was the pizza guy she'd be counting out the money, if it was Shawn the door would already be wide open, and if it was anyone she didn't know she'd have a baseball bat ready. But she glances in the peephole and hesitates--freezes, really--so Riley knows it's her mom.

"It's okay," she says, trying for a smile so that Katy won't have to keep standing there, one hand lifted into the air and awkwardly frozen just before descending onto the knob. "She can come in, if it's alright with you."

Katy studies her for a heartbeat, eyes scrunched up with worry, before she keeps moving toward the doorknob.

"Hi, Katy," Topanga says as she steps through the door. There's something icy in her voice, something that started the first night that Katy hadn't sent Riley home and has kept growing steadily colder for the past two months. Riley wonders, in a bleak corner of her mind, if their friendship is just one more unfixable thing she's broken. If the world will always feel off-kilter, every time that Topanga Matthews and Katy Hart greet each other with anything other than warmth and kindness.

She swallows that thought back along with a dozen other bitter regrets and half-formed apologies, doing her best to steady her stomach through sheer force of will. _Smile, Riley. You can do this_.

"Hi, Mom," she says, and is pleasantly surprised when that comes out as normal English and not an incoherent series of sobs.

"Riley," her mom says, something eerily frayed in her voice. She sounds… tired? Shaken? Upset? Whatever it is, it's something that should never have touched Topanga Matthews. She's supposed to be untouchable.

Then again, Riley's been suprised by the number of supposed-to-bes that have been proven wrong this year. Maybe this one's no exception, just another broken belief to add to the pile.

"Do you have time to talk?" her mom asks, but she's doing that mom thing with her voice that makes it not really a question at all.

"Yeah, sure," Riley responds, and does her best to tell the sinking feeling in her stomach to shut up and go away. She _wants_ to talk to her mom. She wants to stop fighting. Or--to start fighting again, maybe, if that's what it takes for this to be over. Does two months of radio silence count as fighting, or is that just not talking?

 _It doesn't matter_ , she tells herself, and follows Topanga out the door.

It's good that they're talking again. This is a _good thing_. 

* * *

Riley comes back in fifteen minutes later, pale as a sheet and with eyes that glimmer dully with unshed tears.

Maya and Katy wrap her up in a big Hart hug, because they're the best. They tell her that it'll all be okay, that she'll work this out, that she and her mom can still fix things but it might take some work on both sides.

(It's the first time that's sounded like a lie.)

* * *

Second semester flies by in a dizzying whirl.

Riley goes to the guidance counselor early on and requests to be switched into a different history class. The situation takes some explaining, especially since she wants to make the change without getting the signature of her legal guardian, but in the end she manages to talk them into it. It's a little weird, being in a separate history class from all of her friends, and a lot weird to not see her dad every day anymore, but it's also easier. Her grades go up when history isn't a constant reminder of how messed up everything's gotten--shocking, she knows.

Summer comes along faster than anticipated, and the days are long, sun-drenched adventures in working more hours and wandering the city and spending time with her friends. She doesn't have as much schoolwork, just a handful of summer assignments, so she picks up volunteering once a week at an animal shelter a few blocks away. Maya teases her mercilessly on the walk there-- _look out, they really will make you a saint and then you'll have to wear those stupid robes_ \--but stays for her whole shift, watching the kittens mewl with wide eyes. Riley's more of a dog person, and neither of them have ever had any pets, but when Maya finds her perfect match in a tiny black kitten named Daisy they can't resist taking her home and trying to build a DIY cat tower out of old clothes and cardboard tubes. Katy finds out on day two (okay, maybe just keeping the bedroom door shut all the time wasn't quite as brilliant as they thought), but can't resist Daisy's little green eyes and off-kilter scamper, so she stays.

And if Maya starts volunteering at that shelter with Riley every week, too? Well, a little teasing in retribution is only natural. Revenge is healthy, in small doses. 

She expected to spend pretty much any time she wasn't at work or at the shelter with her friends, and that kind of happens. She spends a lot of time wandering the parks with Lucas or having sleepovers at Smackle's or competing with Zay to see who can catch more popcorn in their mouth. Farkle starts coming to work on his summer assignments in the diner when she's working, and he claims that's it's got nothing to do with her-- _you guys just have the best coffee in town, don't get a big head there, Riley_ \--but she's pretty sure he's joking, because his smile is all soft lilac edges and she knows for a fact that their coffee is actually shit. 

But a surprising amount of the time, she winds up on her own. Sometimes it's just because everyone else is busy. Sometimes it's because she has to get this reading done and it's never going to happen with Maya telling her all about whatever Buzzfeed quiz she's taking in the corner now. Sometimes it's because she just needs _out_ , if she's honest. 

On days that she feels caught in her skin, emotions rubbed raw like carpet burn, she feels herself getting frustrated at every little thing and she just needs to leave before she blows up. It makes her a little upset and a lot embarrassed--she's the queen of Rileytown, she shouldn't get this _angry_ over nothing!--but then it just winds up this weird, hurting circle where she's mad at the world for being so messed up and mad at herself for being mad and it's just... it's not good. But after the first time she snaps at Maya over nothing, leaving her best friend with wide, hurt eyes and a timid silence, she feels so bad she has trouble eating for three days, so now when she feels herself getting all worked up she finds somewhere else to be. The library is good for that, usually--it's hard to stay made surrounded by laughing children and tired college students and people going about their days. It reminds her that the whole world isn't made up of her mistakes and arguments and problems. She can sit in a sea of people going about their days, who each have their own mistakes and arguments and problems. Who each have their own angry days and sad days and amazing days with friends.

She goes out when she's angry, and sometimes when she's the kind of sad that Maya and chocolate cake can't fix, and sometimes when she's feeling great but kind of quiet and settled into her own skin. She relearns how to look at her city without seeing the ghosts of all the ways her world has fractured over the last nine months. She learns for the first time how to navigate the crowded subway by herself and feel independent rather than just overwhelmed. It's strange, how comforting that can be now when a year or two ago she felt like the world was too big and scary and dangerous for her to ever brave it without her family by her side.

"It's like looking up at the stars on a winter night and knowing you aren't alone," Smackle says knowingly when Riley tries to articulate this. "Knowing the universe is so much bigger than your little blue speck. It's a good feeling. The best kind of loneliness."

"Damn, girl, I didn't know you were a poet," Zay says from where he's draped halfway off the bed. A movie's playing in the background, but none of them are watching it. 

Farkle, whose fingers have been loosely tangled with Smackle's this whole time, answers without looking up from his reading (neurotransmitters, this time). "If you've gotten this far without realizing she can do literally anything she wants, including poetry, there really is no hope for you."

Lucas tosses his head back and laughs, a full sound dripping with Texas sun, and Maya scowls from the bed where she's perched with her sketchpad propped against his back. 

"You smudged my lines, Huckleberry!" she snaps, swatting at the top of his head. 

"Aren't you doing that in pencil? Just fix it."

"No," Maya grumbles, "I told you, relining with the pen afterward is like twice as much work. I can do it right the first time, if _someone_ doesn't move while he's supposed to be an easel."

"Or you could just do it in pencil like you're supposed to and not have to worry about this," he shoots back, but it's light and friendly, and Maya's scowl is already fading as Zay starts waxing poetic about how art is all up to interpretation anyway and _just say it was intentional, Hart, what's the difference, no one but you will know--_

Riley leans further into the beanbag with a contented sigh and can't help but smile a little. Okay, so this isn't where she thought she'd be a year ago, but even if things are a little wonky and even if she still misses her parents like crazy half the time, she has this. She has a room full of people who love her and care about her and support her in any way they can. And she loves them just as fiercely. That's not nothing. 

That is in fact, she's beginning to figure out, absolutely everything. 

* * *

She and Topanga keep trying to work it out, and it hurts, but not in the way she had expected. Fighting with her mom, up to this point, has always come in little arguments that come and go like summer thunderstorms, or else in big, screaming fights that make Riley feel like she's shaking apart at the seams. They end in one of two ways: either they make up, or they don't.

But now, Riley and her mom make plans to meet up at coffee shops, at parks, at a family counselor's little green couch. They sit down and talk to each other about what they each thought that fight was about and why they've each been hurting for the past year and in some ways it's better than fighting and in some ways it's worse. Most of the time it's neither, just a different flavor of _bad_ than regular fighting. Talking about their problems leaves a different aftertaste of pain, one that's all cherries and plums and bruising hearts. 

Her mom is hurting _because of her_ and Riley still feels the sheer wrongness of this statement a year out, like everything just started falling up or the sun rose in the west. But it's also one she can't just make go away, because she knows, in that little voice deep inside, that it's not wrong to have boundaries. They fought with each other and Riley left and Topanga didn't come after her, and those wounds have been festering all this time and there are no magic apologies that can take back all those sleepless nights. 

(She tries moving back in, just once. It's the beginning of sophomore year, a time for fresh starts, and she moves back in with a heart full of hope, choking on relief. Three days later she's on a train home? to Maya's with her chin high and her cheeks covered in drying tears and her backpack still full of clothes, nestled against her shoulder blades and held in place by one white-knuckled fist.)

(She hadn't stormed out, this time. She and Topanga had sat down and had a mature conversation about boundaries and trust and working to fix what's been broken and by the end they were both in quiet tears, staring at each other and realizing they weren't ready to be back in each other's lives that much yet.)

(It wasn't a fight but that doesn't mean they aren't both heartbroken by the end of it.)

But even if there aren't any magic apologies to fix it all, even if she isn't ready to come back and live with them just yet, she still misses her mom and her dad and Auggie. It hurts, having to rebuild her relationship with him--not because he hurt her but because she left and for all his apparent maturity, he's still too little to really understand what happened. All he knows is that his parents were mad and his big sister who was always supposed to be there for him disappeared. 

If she were still in her dad's history class, she thinks he'd probably whip up a lesson on civilian casualties, on innocents caught in the crossfire and wartime medics and the way that humans can be capable of so much--well, just... so much. 

But she's not and, as far as she knows, he doesn't. He doesn't teach her and her classmates how to apologize. It's something she's starting to figure out herself, with practice. How to actually apologize, without making excuses or making it about her version of events. How to wrap someone up in her arms and say _I see you I know you're hurting I'm so sorry for what I did to cause that_. 

It's a work in progress, but then, so is she. So is everything. 

* * *

Time keeps moving, because that's what it does. It marches forward and doesn't care if there's some new drama or joy or heartbreak; the sun is moving across the sky and the galaxy is whizzing through space and the universe is so much bigger than your little blue speck. 

(That can be comforting, if you let it.)

Riley stops holding her breath, at some point. She lets go of the idea that everything is going to magically go back to normal. She lets go of the idea that normal is what she needs, at all. 

She had thought, that first night in November, screaming against Godzilla about some stupid TV show and a Friday afternoon shift at the bakery, that this was going to break her. Riley _loved_ her family with everything she had, every bone and muscle and drop of blood. She still does. It's why walking away hurt so bad, like cutting out her heart and leaving it to pulse weakly on the sidewalk while she stumbled away on shaking legs. She had thought _this is the worst pain I have ever felt_ . She had thought _what if this breaks me_. 

But it's been months... a year... years... and she hasn't broken. She still misses what she used to have, but she knows that she's a lucky one, in the end. She has amazing friends--family, really--and she has a blood family who are willing to work with her, to meet her halfway, to try and learn new ways of being in each others' lives. She's still living with Maya and Katy and now Shawn, still working at the diner and volunteering at the shelter, but when she graduates from high school Cory and Topanga and Auggie are all in the stands screaming her name. She and Maya do their first two years of gen eds at a community college to save money, but when it's time to transfer to a NYU, they have plenty of hands to help move them into their shared dorm room: Lucas and his mom are there, and so are Katy and Shawn, and so are Topanga and Cory. Farkle and Smackle are abroad in Germany on matching research fellowships, but they video chat for the occasion, directing furniture movement and succulent placement from across the ocean like the dictators everyone's pretty sure they'll eventually become. 

Her life is pretty much the opposite of typical, and she still stumbles over what to call people when her classmates are making small talk. Who are her parents, at this point? Who is her family?

Eventually she gives up and starts counting them all. When people ask her how many siblings she has, she answers _seven_ and counts them out in her head, easy as breathing: Auggie-Maya-Lucas-Zay-Farkle-Smackle. She says she has two sets of parents--Cory & Topanga and Katy & Shawn, because they mean just as much to her after welcoming her in for almost her all of her high school years--and too many aunts and uncles to count. The others smile and nod, sometimes laugh knowingly. _Step-kid, huh?_ they say, and she shrugs with a smile, lets them believe that. It's the shorter, easier explanation, even if it's not an entirely accurate way to sum up everything that happened. 

Riley spends her time with her family, every chaotic side of it, and with her new college friends. She works and volunteers and goes to class. Sometimes she takes off for a weekend alone, buys cheap airplane tickets to go see some little corner of the world she doesn't know exists and shows up three days later, tanned and windblown and flushed with excitement, fists full of souvenirs and stories about cute little mom-and-pop fudge shops. She sees late-night movies with Maya and feels rebellious for ordering popcorn _and_ chocolate, because she's still Riley, at the heart of it. She never _stopped_ being Riley. She just grew, because that's what people do--they grow up and out, accumulating years and scars like rings on a tree, counting back to the very core of a person. 

She had thought, when things first fell apart, that this would break her, but it doesn't. She doesn't break. She learns that people in general don't break easily, even though they treat each other like they will. She learns that she's got a thicker skin than she ever gave herself credit for, and that if she trusts herself, she'll nearly always land on her feet. And when she doesn't, well, that's what friends are for, right? 

She stumbles, sometimes, and the heartbreaks and hurts accumulate, but that's not something she can blame on running away from home. That's just living, plain and simple. It's the cost of being human: you'll spend your life paying out dividends of grief, because no life full of love and happiness and hope comes for free. Because no life without anything worth grieving is really living at all. 

Riley doesn't know if she'd got so far as to say she'd do it all over again, because she doesn't think she would, to be honest. She loves her life, loves the family around her, but that doesn't mean she doesn't have regrets about the way it all went down, about the way her stuttering words sometimes cut people to shreds when she was still a kid figuring it all out. But there _is_ value in the way that things went, too. She knows now that she can listen to that little voice inside of her, that she can lose everything but the clothes on her back and a bunny nightlight and $17 in her pocket and still be okay. She trusts herself. She knows the value of that, now. Knows her own value. 

If she can stand up to Topanga freakin' Matthews at fifteen and walk away to tell the tale, she can do literally anything.

* * *

A moment, years down the line:

Riley and Maya sit on a paint-speckled pink blanket, loose-limbed and lazy in the afternoon light. Their arms are lightly looped together, their matching friendship rings still glinting as they sit, poised, on the women's fingers. Maya's gaze is tilted upward, her eyes squinted as she traces the Sunday light that illuminates the underside of the thin maple leaves, turning the air above them into a collection of green lightning snapshots, veins like crackling energy suddenly gone still. Riley is taking a break from watching the others to sit with her eyes closed and feel the breeze ruffle across her face, but she keeps sneaking looks at her best friend and she suspects that level of concentration means the gallery is going to be covered in detailed paintings of leaves in the sunlight for a little while. 

She closes her eyes again, exhaling softly and tipping her neck back to let the natural warmth of the day seep into her skin. In the distance, the sound of children playing is drowned out by the ultra-competitive frisbee game the others have started. From the sounds of it, Smackle and Lucas have gone rogue to team up; Zay's tossing out taunts but Farkle must know that that combination of physics and athletics is lethal, because he's already shouting his surrender. 

That, or he just feels bad about playing on a different team than his heavily-pregnant wife. 

Riley sneaks another glance at Maya--today's the first time she's gotten to see the new haircut in person and it somehow looks even better than it did on camera--but this time her best friend catches her at it. 

She bumps their shoulders together, clumsy and loving, still familiar even after all this time. 

"Whatcha thinkin' about, Peaches?"

"Nothing," Riley smiles, feeling lighter than she has in years. "Just how nice it is to be home."


End file.
